The money is in the boring jobs. EP #253 - Shorty

Hey guys, you know, the money that you can make in film and television is tempered by the kind of work that you do. If you're a freelancer, you're tempered by the day rate. And where I think a lot of people make a big mistake is chasing the hero jobs that everybody else is chasing. When in actual fact, the real money is in the glue. And by glue, I mean the boring jobs. On today's episode, which is episode 253 of the how to Scale a Video Business podcast, I want to talk about just that. How people are chasing the wrong work in the wrong areas.

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So guys, you know, this is where I see a lot of people making mistakes in video production. They're always chasing the hero jobs. Everybody wants the TVCs, they want the big corporates, the big budgets. If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, oh, I just want to work with big, medium to size, large, medium to size to large clients who've got marketing budget, who want to spend a lot of money, and that is like the wrong market to chase, in my opinion. I work with about 60 different filmmakers across my two programs and I can tell you the ones that are making big money are doing a lot of what I call glue. And by glue, I mean bread and butter jobs that aren't that sexy on the surface and aren't necessarily huge budgets in isolation. However, when you consider the volume of kind of work that can be done there, some projects can end up being 20 or $30,000 just from what starts as a couple of little projects. So I want you to be thinking about the kind of work that you do and are you chasing the big hero jobs or are you actually leaning into the glue in business? Take for example, the building industry just now is going nuts in Australia. Absolutely nuts. People are renovating, people are building. There's apartment blocks going up everywhere. There are new houses being built. Everywhere I turn here on the Sunshine coast, there's some kind of construction. All of those construction companies are using product. Now our house, when it was built, there was about 100 different trades went through the house to get it built. Now we had an issue with our floor recently. And so the people we bought the house off referred us back to the builder. The builder referred us back to the contractor. The contractor came in and said, when we lay these subfloors, we have to do it in a certain way, otherwise we get the warranties void and we have to handle it in a certain way, we have to lay it in a certain way, we have to glue it, we have to nail it, we have to do all these things and we have to photograph it when it's done. So we've got a reference and they came to fix it. It was bit squeaky, they fixed it. But I suddenly got thinking. Well, you know, I bet you there are situations or there have been situations in the past where someone has installed the floor incorrectly and then it's become a big problem, it's had to be ripped up, it's very expensive. So the way in which I would approach manufacturing businesses with this kind of offer is to ask them the question, you know, in the space that you work in, what is the pain like when something doesn't go in properly or something isn't installed correctly or it has to be ripped out? How expensive is that and what kind of pain does it cause you as a business? Because I guarantee there have been situations in almost every business that has a product or service that has to be installed by a third party where someone hasn't read the instructions and it hasn't been installed correctly. So as a video production company, if you can get in front of those people and talk about the pain it causes when the problem goes wrong, and would it be worth creating some really detailed video instructions of each step of the process that could mitigate any liability because you're providing the user and the contractor with the instructions on how to use it in a video based platform. Now that could easily be behind a membership site that could easily be behind something like teachable, where they can have their contractors have to go through the training and answer some questions and then, you know, say they've, they've, they've accepted that, they've watched the training and you could do that or you could, you could outsource that. But the point is, is that if a company's spending 50 to $100,000 fixing problems, then they're going to be quite happy to spend 20,000 or $30,000 making a series of videos that will prevent the problem from happening again. And I've had a number of clients who are making a very, very substantial income from making the glue type products, the stuff that isn't that sexy. And what I've observed across both the up level program and the elite program is that the Companies that make a lot of coin are doing a lot of bread and butter corporate. And it's not necessarily that sexy. But here's the twist is you can make stuff cool and funny and enjoyable to watch. And I think when it comes to the traditional corporate video, the ones that are explainers or their training or their installation videos, they can often be a little bit dry. And so if you come along with some creative ideas and a great production value, there's no reason why you can't turn that dry video into something fun and engaging and memorable. In fact, Caleb, who you've had me mention on the show before and who's been on the podcast.

He, he was doing a video for a grain company and it was, it was a Covid compliance video. And so the COVID compliance video in itself could have been quite dry. But what they did was they talked about wearing masks and they got approval to say that one of the masks you can wear is a spider man mask. And so they injected humor and lightheartedness into this so that when the truck drivers drop the grain off, they've got to be wearing a mask. And they made it. A spider man mask was one of the masks they could wear. So that was a great example of.

Everyone remembered the video because it was so unusual. It was juxtaposed with.

What was otherwise quite a dry informational video. And it's had the added effect that everyone's now talking about this particular grain company because it's the guys that got the Spider man mask. So they made something humorous and light hearted out of something that everybody knew they had to comply with. And so when I talk about making the boring corporate, you don't have to make it in a boring way. The subject matter might be dry, but I really believe that if you are a passionate storyteller and a professional filmmaker, then you can turn a boring, dry subject into something fun and engaging that people will watch. And if you do that, then the company gets a great response. Then they're going to be thinking, well, what else can we do? How else can we use these guys? And, and you know, your job as a professional is to turn shit, let's be honest, into greatness, to take boring boardrooms and make them look fantastic. So when there's a boring story or a monotonous kind of what feels like a very pedestrian story or an angle, I really encourage you to think about how can you turn that into something interesting and fun and start thinking about the clients you have that maybe you've done some kind of hero corporate videos for? What else could they use video for? And I really think if you build a great relationship with your clients and you truly go to them to be of great help and service, then you're going to find yourself with a lot more opportunities. And off the back of that, making an awful lot more money.

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